1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus that ejects liquid from a liquid ejecting head.
2. Related Art
From the related art, as a type of liquid ejecting apparatuses, ink jet type printers have been widely known which eject ink (liquid) to a target such as paper from nozzles formed in the liquid ejecting head to perform recording. In such printers, in order to suppress clogging of the nozzles of a recording head (liquid ejecting head), flushing is performed which ejects (that is, discharges) the ink from the nozzles that waste ink (waste fluid) based on a control signal unrelated to recording with respect to the target.
For example, a liquid ejecting apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2006-192862 is provided with a block-shaped inclined surface member including an inclined surface portion (a liquid receiving surface) that receives the ink discharged from the nozzles of the recording head by the flushing operation and causes the received waste ink to flow down toward a waste ink tank side. Moreover, in the liquid ejecting apparatus, at the time of flushing, among various inks ejected from a plurality of nozzles, ink which is relatively hard to solidify rather than ink which is relatively easy to solidify is ejected toward an upper position of the inclined surface portion. That is, among various inks ejected from the nozzles and attached to the inclined surface portion, since the ink attached to the upper position is hard to solidify and flows down the inclined surface portion while maintaining fluidity, the ink flowing down from the upper position is mixed with the ink which is attached to a position lower than the upper position and is easily solidified while flowing down, and various inks flow down the inclined surface portion together and are collected in the waste ink tank.
However, among various inks attached onto the inclined surface portion of the inclined surface member configured to receive the ink ejected from the liquid ejecting heads due to flushing, in some cases, the ink which is easy to solidify may be deposited on the inclined surface portion and may be aggregated. Meanwhile, although the ink, which is ejected to the upper position of the inclined surface portion and is hard to solidify, is not aggregated and flows down along the inclined surface, power of the flow thereof is only weak enough to flow down according to gravity. For that reason, in the flow of ink of weak power, because the ink is easily solidified, it is difficult to cause the deposited and aggregated ink to flow down from the inclined surface. As a result, there was a problem that the waste ink cannot be collected in the waste ink tank.
In addition, such facts are almost common in liquid ejecting apparatuses having a receiving surface of liquid discharged from the liquid ejecting head as waste fluid, without being limited to an ink jet type printer including the flushing box having the receiving surface of the waste ink.